The concept of growing grasses over an impervious surface, typically plastic sheeting, goes back, at least in the United States, to experiments conducted in the 1960's by Dr. Henry F. Decker at Ohio Wesleyan University, in Delaware, Oh. It was proved at that time that many types of grasses would grow well and would produce sods rapidly in various contrived media placed over plastic sheeting (Decker, 1975).
In harvesting the sod, however, until this invention, the Plastic sheeting on which the sod had been growing has been considered expendable and is typically destroyed in the harvesting process thus adding to labor and production costs. In addition the practice is environmentally questionable since it eliminates a perfectly good opportunity to recycle and reuse the plastic for subsequent sod crops.